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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

AC Milan 0 Tottenham 1

SAN HERO ... Crouch scores to sink AC Milan

TOTTENHAM reached an incredible new high on their European journey by stunning AC Milan.

Peter Crouch and Aaron Lennon ripped Milan to shreds as Spurs roared into the Champions League box seat.
They will now host the Italian giants next month with a real chance to making the quarter-finals.

They are there thanks to a breakneck counter-attack from Lennon with just ten minutes to go.

The wing whiz tore into enemy territory and slid a perfect ball for Crouch to tap home.

Spurs had held their own in a fiery game that saw Vedran Corluka stretchered off and Gennero Gattuso shove Joe Jordan in the face.

FLASHPOINT ... Gattuso grabs Jordan

But Harry Redknapp's men had the last laugh after Crouch pounced on 80 minutes.
They even survived a last-second Zlatan Ibrahimovic goal — that was chalked off for a foul.

Spurs were shouting for a penalty after just 40 SECONDS when Steven Pienaar's cross hit Alessandro Nesta on the arm.

And although it was not given it sparked a spell of domination for the Londoners.

On eight minutes, Kranjcar floated a ball in that Christian Abbiati just nabbed from Crouch. And Rafael van der Vaart tested the keeper again soon after.

It was an incredible start from Redknapp's lads and Abbiati denied Crouch again, this time from Lennon's cross.

The Milan stopper was then stretchered off with a mystery head injury, and was replaced by Marco Amelia.

The San Siro crowd then erupted when Ibrahimovic went down under pressure from Sandro in the box — and saw the ref wave play on.

Lennon was giving Luca Antonini the runaround on the right.

And there was still time before the break for the flying winger to flash in another dangerous cross.

It was all-square at the interval — yet Spurs would not have been too disheartened after the nightmare first 45 minutes on their last trip to this stadium.

Van der Vaart picked up the pace again after the break and he bamboozled the Milan defence with a glorious chip that just floated over.

Gomes then pulled off a breathtaking save to deny Mario Ypres.

The Milan man's header looked destined to fly in, and even beat Gomes — but the Spurs stopper miraculously clawed it back to push wide.